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After Steve Jobs died, people recognized that his worth to society should be defined by his legacy of innovation and not by the material wealth he personally acquired. People were willing to admit, at least in his posthumous case, that entrepreneurs are to be thought of first and foremost as risk-takers and then as “the rich.” That philosophy did not stick for very long. An attitude continues to grow in America that has begun to be reflected in public policy, which heaps disdain on the creative and successful. No matter how many people are behind it, though, even if it’s fully 99% of us, this mentality will never lead to progress and cannot be sustained. To really move forward, we have to reassess what it means to be creative and start respecting again what the best and the brightest do for us.

Part of our devaluation of creativity comes from the fact that typical attempts to make sense of it bring up education. Executive vice president of Human Resources at Merck, Mirian Graddick-Weir, for instance, wrote a blog post for the Harvard Business Review in March on “How to Educate More Creative Problem-Solvers.” Like others, she concludes that American children are not developing into creative people because “we haven't adequately taught them how to think.” Poor math and science scores are often cited as a bad omen for our future in a global economy. Yet, these are red herrings. Creativity has little to do with the reported sub-par skills of average students and nothing to do with standardized measures of performance.

Creativity is not taught. The impulse has to already be present in a person; it cannot be implanted by a curriculum, even the most comprehensive. Creativity is not a commodity either. It cannot be bought by federal funding or parents paying for private tutors. Creativity is a natural quality—either you can imagine what doesn’t exist or you can’t—that is then nurtured through exploration so it can be used productively to make new things out of nothing.

A creative person can be born into any circumstances and can thrive in any circumstances. He or she can be anyone in society. Michelangelo was the son of a local government official and had the pope himself for a patron, while Solzhenitsyn grew up fatherless and was sent by the state to prison camps. Galileo died under house arrest, Newton died a knight. A quick survey of some of the brightest minds civilization has known shows that there is no uniformity to their life stories. There is no set path to doing great things for the world. That’s why so many people puzzle over the phenomenon and dig into biographies. They are looking for a rubric when there is none.

Without a rubric, and taking into consideration that many we call geniuses suffered with formal schooling, it is not very reasonable to look to collective education as the source of creative thinking. Creativity is an individual gift individually expressed. Success too is unique. Yet people want to impose the universal measurement of dollars and regulate both. Americans are losing appreciation for the extraordinary nature of an innovative mind. That’s why so many are quick to gang up and revile the exceptional few who can both dream big and follow through. It’s a mistake to do this.

There is already a huge barrier to trying something new and different: the threat of failure. Yet, the self-proclaimed 99% continues to make success seem like a worse fate. No one would bother to use their natural abilities to better the lives of others if a super-majority of those others were going to set an agenda against them. Those who signed the 99% Spring letter, though, seem to think that by holding the high-achievers back they are going to move us all forward. This is irrational. They use the words “wealth” and “richest” and will say they’re just after an indolent, politically insidious class of top-earners, but they are assaulting our creative class in the process.

There is more to being creative than ending up financially secure—starving artists abound—but there is a coincidence of creativity and material success that can’t be ignored. A bold mind may invent something in his garage because he has the idea and the aptitude, but for it to matter and for us to benefit, he must make it widely available. That is going to involve economic decisions. Like it or not, it is going to involve money and he is going to make some. If we live in a just world, the bold mind will be rewarded. Why would we want it to be otherwise?

The problem is that we don’t realize that creative people are doing more for us than invent the big things we can see and touch. They are quietly being brave enough to try something new, anonymously making our lives easier and more enjoyable. It’s too subtle for us to notice. We have no clue how vast and interconnected our society is and assume instead that a small fraction, a fraction about the same size as the population of American Jews, has all the money and power and seeks to manipulate and disenfranchise the rest of us.

No one would dare to draw this particular connection, though, because major labor unions and non-profit organizations have not signed a letter about how that 1 to 2% of the population seems to hoard wealth and detract from our larger common purpose. They aren’t singling out a minority that would get them in trouble. Instead they have in their crosshairs the 1% of the population that has done too well for themselves regardless of actual identity.

Creative individuals are rare, which is why their names stand out in history, but they are not so rare that only those who have become famous can be given the label. They are not merely the 1% we can target, but the way we treat the 1% affects the others. Without being geniuses, people everywhere think creatively to solve problems, balance budgets, achieve goals, and change their immediate worlds. They have to be inclined to do it, though. There has to be a good enough reason for them to be willing to take the risk of making an unusual or unorthodox decision.

That’s the point of creativity: to do what hasn’t been done. The incentive for doing it is often simple. Because we have basic human needs that we can’t supply ourselves, we have to turn to a larger market and to do that we have to have the means to participate in exchanges; creativity is a way of obtaining and saving that means. Finding and keeping a living can be the greatest impetus for creative activity.